Many software projects spend a significant proportion of their time developing the User
Interface (UI), therefore any degree of automation in this area has clear benefits. Research
projects to date generally take one of three approaches: interactive graphical specification tools,
model-based generation tools, or language-based tools. The first two have proven popular in
industry but are labour intensive and error-prone. The third is more automated but has practical
problems which have led to a lack of industry adoption.
This thesis set out to understand and address these limitations. It studied the issues of UI
generation in practice using Action Research cycles guided by interviews, adoption studies, case
studies and close collaboration with industry practitioners. It further applied the emerging field
of software mining to address some of these issues. Software mining is used to collate multiple
inspections of an application's artefacts into a detailed model, which can then be used to drive
UI generation. Finally, this thesis explicitly defined bounds to the generation, such that it can
usefully automate some parts of the UI development process without restricting the
practitioner's freedom in other parts. It proposed UI generation as a way to augment manual UI
construction rather than replace it.
To verify the research, this thesis built an Open Source project using successive generations of
Iterative Development, and released and promoted it to organisations and practitioners. It
tracked and validated the project's reception and adoption within the community, with an
ultimate goal of mainstream industry acceptance. This goal was achieved on a number of levels,
including when the project was recognised by Red Hat, an industry leader in enterprise
middleware. Red Hat acknowledged the applicability and potential of the research within
industry and integrated it into their next generation products.

Many software projects spend a significant proportion of their time developing the User
Interface (UI), therefore any degree of automation in this area has clear benefits. Research
projects to date generally take one of three approaches: interactive graphical specification tools,
model-based generation tools, or language-based tools. The first two have proven popular in
industry but are labour intensive and error-prone. The third is more automated but has practical
problems which have led to a lack of industry adoption.
This thesis set out to understand and address these limitations. It studied the issues of UI
generation in practice using Action Research cycles guided by interviews, adoption studies, case
studies and close collaboration with industry practitioners. It further applied the emerging field
of software mining to address some of these issues. Software mining is used to collate multiple
inspections of an application's artefacts into a detailed model, which can then be used to drive
UI generation. Finally, this thesis explicitly defined bounds to the generation, such that it can
usefully automate some parts of the UI development process without restricting the
practitioner's freedom in other parts. It proposed UI generation as a way to augment manual UI
construction rather than replace it.
To verify the research, this thesis built an Open Source project using successive generations of
Iterative Development, and released and promoted it to organisations and practitioners. It
tracked and validated the project's reception and adoption within the community, with an
ultimate goal of mainstream industry acceptance. This goal was achieved on a number of levels,
including when the project was recognised by Red Hat, an industry leader in enterprise
middleware. Red Hat acknowledged the applicability and potential of the research within
industry and integrated it into their next generation products.

OPUS Help

OPUS

OPUS (Open Publications of UTS Scholars) is the UTS institutional repository. It showcases the research of UTS staff and postgraduate students to a global audience. For you, as a researcher, OPUS increases the visibility and accessibility of your research by making it openly available regardless of where you choose to publish.

Items in OPUS are enhanced with high quality metadata and seeded to search engines such as Google Scholar as well as being linked to your UTS research profile, increasing discoverability and opportunities for citation of your work and collaboration. In addition, works in OPUS are preserved for long-term access and discovery.

The UTS Open Access Policy requires UTS research outputs to be openly available via OPUS. Depositing your work in OPUS also assists you in complying with ARC, NHMRC and other funder Open Access policies. Providing Open Access to your research outputs through OPUS not only ensures you comply with these important policies, but increases opportunities for other researchers to cite and build upon your work.

OPUS archives UTS research submitted for Higher Education Research Data Collection (HERDC) and Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA). It also stores digital theses and forms of scholarship that do not usually see formal publication.

How can you deposit works in OPUS?

When you claim (or enter) your research in Symplectic Elements, simply upload a copy of your work which can be made openly available. Symplectic provides information on which version of your work to upload. If you are unsure, please supply a copy of the Accepted Manuscript version. Ensure you check the box to "agree to the OPUS license terms".

Once uploaded, your works are automatically sent to OPUS and placed temporarily in Closed Access until reviewed by UTS Library staff.